


gimel

by Spatz



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Chocolate, Friendship, Gen, Hanukkah, Team Arrow, Wine, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 17:25:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1096550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spatz/pseuds/Spatz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a way, Felicity was kind of glad that Hanukkah and Thanksgiving weren't going to overlap for another 70,000 years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	gimel

**Author's Note:**

  * For [donutsweeper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/donutsweeper/gifts).



> Set post-2x06, but only very minor spoilers for that episode. Many thanks to inmyriadbits for the beta, and to ArsenicJade for Hanukkah-picking for me!

In a way, Felicity was kind of glad that Hanukkah and Thanksgiving weren't going to overlap for another 70,000 years (give or take a few millenia). For one thing, she would never have to hear the word 'Thanksgivukkah' ever, _ever_ again. But mostly, having everyone in her life off eating turkey with their families while she lit her menorah alone was not an experience she particularly wanted to repeat.

She could hardly begrudge Oliver spending the day with Thea, with a planned visit to Iron Heights to see their mom. And Diggle had been invited to have dinner with Lyla – no family had been mentioned, so Felicity had hopes that it was going to be a romantic meal for the two of them. They both deserved it after that whole mess in Russia last week.

Sighing, Felicity made herself stop staring at the three candles flickering in her window and took the box of matches to the kitchen with the remains of her dissatisfying matzoh ball soup – her go-to comfort food, not traditional for Hanukkah, but it just wasn't the same when it came from a box. She'd eaten sufganiyot last night, but the little deli where she'd bought them had been closed today. The owner was a rabid Rogues fan, so she suspected he'd scored tickets to their Thanksgiving Day game and decamped to Gotham.

The less said about her attempt to make latkes, the better.

Maybe she'd go to Shabbat services tomorrow. Felicity hadn't been in a long time, ever since her Friday nights got busy with a different kind of service.

The knock at the door jolted her out of her thoughts, and she fumbled her bowl into the sink, nearly dropping it.

Even before her introduction to fighting crime, Felicity had been properly paranoid about answering her door and securing the locks on it, but discovering just how many home invasions never made it past police reports and into the news had prompted her to set up a security camera in the hallway to supplement the standard peephole. 

(She had possibly neglected to inform her landlord about the camera. Oops. It was hard to spot, anyway.)

The upshot being that when she looked at the security feed and saw Oliver Queen standing outside her door, she had time to compose herself. Or, more specifically, to do a frantic and uncoordinated purge of the contents of her coffee table. Thank god she was still dressed from work. Not that Oliver hadn't seen her in ratty workout clothes, bloodstained cardigans, or worse before, but this was her apartment. It deserved nice things.

Plus, Russia and the whole Incident With Isabelle was still too close for comfort. She needed a little armor.

Oliver was staring directly into the security camera by the time she was ready – and of course he'd spotted the camera in twenty seconds flat. It was sometimes a little hilarious how well his island skills translated into urban vigilantism. She opened the door with a polite smile – one that became genuine when he brought his hand out from behind his back and she saw what he was holding.

"Manischewitz?" Felicity bit her lip to keep from laughing.

“You like red wine,” Oliver said, “and it's Hanukkah. So, kosher wine.”

“You need to improve your google-fu, Oliver – there's more than one brand of kosher wine. Ones that don't suck,” she said, taking the bottle from him. She would bet her best laptop that he had just searched for 'Jewish wine' and neglected to actually read beyond the blurbs.

“Oh.” He smiled ruefully and brought his other hand out from behind his back. “Well, I guess it's a good thing I had a backup plan.” With a flourish, he presented her with a bottle of 2004 Cesari Amarone and Felicity snatched it up eagerly.

“Oooh, backup plans are the best. You should have them more often.”

“Duly noted.”

“Wait, Oliver had a backup plan and I missed it?” a familiar voice interrupted from down the hall.

“Digg!” Delighted, Felicity turned to see Diggle step out of the stairwell carrying a shopping bag. “Wait, I thought you were having dinner with Lyla – what happened?”

“Well, dinner went great, but then ARGUS called during dessert....”

“Say no more.” Felicity made a face, and couldn't stop herself from adding, “Also, I really hope 'dessert' isn't a euphemism.”

Diggle grinned and shook his head. “Just creme brulee, I promise.” He clapped Oliver on the shoulder in greeting and peered at the wine Felicity was holding. "Looks like we had the same idea, Oliver." Since Felicity's hands were full with the two bottles of wine, he held his shopping bag open so that she could see the golden glint of foil-wrapped chocolate inside.

"Gelt!" Felicity exclaimed. Despite her existing collection of very expensive and delicious chocolate – an essential requirement with her night job as vigilante tech support, she'd discovered – there was something Pavlovian about the cheap little chocolate coins, even if they always tasted waxy.

"I saw a window display on my way home from the restaurant and remembered it was Hanukkah," Digg said. "Last time it overlaps with Thanksgiving for, what, 70,000 years?"

"77,798," Felicity said, then hedged, "Unless the calendars change first, which seems more likely.”

“By the way,” Oliver asked, putting on his 'I'm just an dumb innocent billionaire playboy' face, which she knew well from the days before he'd shown up bleeding in her backseat, “I hear there's fire involved in this holiday. Something about lighting candles?”

“Sorry, I already lit my menorah, but that just means you were spared my singing."

"Awww," Diggle teased, grinning, "but you have so much blackmail material on us. You should really let us even the odds."

"That's why I brought the wine," Oliver said solemnly.

Felicity snorted. "As long as I have access to the CCTV network, you two are never going to catch up on that count, but nice try. Feel free to bring me more wine when you want to give it another shot." She looked at the bottles in her hands and added, “Also, you're helping me drink these, so stop standing in the hallway and come inside.”

She wasn't going to ask why they'd both ended up here. She had a pretty good idea.

…If either of them suggested 'turning on the game', though, she was going to exact some serious revenge.

* * *

A few hours later, football had been safely avoided in favor of a movie, and the end credits for _An American Tail_ were scrolling up Felicity's TV. Felicity wasn't surprised Diggle and Oliver hadn't seen it – the movie was almost as old as they were – and she'd briefly wanted to stab herself for forgetting that Fievel got separated from his family during a horrible storm at sea, but it had a happy ending, and Oliver had watched the whole thing with a faint smile on his face, which was like anyone else grinning ear-to-ear.

Diggle, on the other hand, had fallen asleep. With the little cut over his eye still healing, he looked lopsided and oddly vulnerable, and Felicity really didn't want to wake him.

Oliver must have felt the same, because he tilted his head towards her dining room and raised his eyebrows in silent question. Felicity nearly spoiled the whole maneuver by tripping over a stray pillow, but Oliver caught her by the elbow before she could faceplant into the coffee table, rescuing the teetering, empty bottle of Amarone with his other hand at the same time.

Felicity detoured to the kitchen, snagging a plate of cheese from the fridge before sitting across from Oliver at the dining room table. She left the light on and the kitchen door open: the candles in her menorah were almost burned out.

"Cheese to go with the wine?" Oliver asked, already opening the Manischewitz. Felicity thought about warning him, but immediately decided against it.

"Mostly. Dairy is sort of traditional," Felicity explained, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb Digg. "It's not something we did when I was a kid, or even heard of, but I took this class in college about religious representation in art – seriously, if I never see another Madonna and Child again, it will be too soon – and Judith was a popular subject. I ended up researching her and sort of picked up the tradition along the way."

Oliver looked blank. Felicity said helpfully, "Judith seduced the general who was about to destroy her city, fed him cheese and wine until he passed out, then beheaded him." Oliver's eyebrows shot up and Felicity grinned. "I'm not really sure how that got connected to Hanukkah, but hey, cheese and wine and a Jewish woman going undercover to save the day. Seemed right."

"Well, then, here's to women and wine," Oliver said with a ironic smile, passing a glass to Felicity. She clinked glasses and took a sip, watching with amusement as Oliver tried his own and immediately made a horrified face.

"Yeah, it's an acquired taste," she said, smirking and slugging back another too-sweet gulp of the wine. It really was terrible, but in a nostalgic way. Oliver set his glass down at a safe distance and didn't touch it again.

They fell into a comfortable silence, with Oliver staring at the menorah in the window.

"You know," he said suddenly, "I remember learning in school about how many holidays this time of year celebrated light, but I never really understood it until the island."

Felicity went still. The times Oliver voluntarily brought up the island – and by voluntarily, she meant when there wasn't some kind of imminent threat – were very, very rare.

Oliver flicked a glance at her before staring back at the menorah. He wasn't really looking at it, she knew. “Growing up in the city, I was used to having lights on all the time, everywhere I went. But on the island, we didn't have many options after dark – even fires were a bad idea sometimes. And in the winter, the days got so short, and cold....” He trailed off. In the corner of her eye, out of Oliver's view, Felicity saw Diggle lift his head up off the back of the couch. She wondered how long he'd been listening. “I finally understood why people would want to put candles in their windows.”

Felicity watched the candlelight glimmer off the familiar planes of Oliver's face, and the equally familiar sadness in his eyes. He didn't have any scars on his face, somehow. It almost made it easy to forget.

Oliver reached out and picked up Felicity's dreidel from the windowsill, and the moment was over.

“This looks old,” he said, running his fingers over the wooden carving. There was still some faded paint around the handle, but the rest was worn smooth from years of handling.

“It's been in the family for a while,” she said quietly. Oliver had told her once that he'd researched her background; he knew just how little family she had, these days.

Without turning his head, Oliver said, “Diggle, where's that gelt you brought? We should play.”

Felicity smiled. He'd known Diggle was awake all along. Probably before she did.

As Diggle heaved himself off the couch, laughing at getting busted, Felicity stealthily reached for her phone. She'd completely forgotten what the dreidel markings meant, and she had a reputation of omniscience to maintain.

**Author's Note:**

> When playing dreidel, _gimel_ is the symbol that wins you the entire pot.


End file.
